Submitted by Samsung’s filings in one of the cases with Apple (I lost track because I have a life) are actually pretty cool. “Samsung has been researching and developing mobile telecommunications technology since at least as early as 1991 and invented much of the technology for today’s smartphones. Indeed, Apple, which sold its first iPhone nearly twenty years after Samsung started developing mobile phone technology, could not have sold a single iPhone without the benefit of Samsung’s patented technology.” Another gem: “Contrary to the image it has cultivated in the popular press, Apple has admitted in internal documents that its strength is not in developing new technologies first, but in successfully commercializing them.”
“Contrary to the image it has cultivated in the popular press, Apple has admitted in internal documents that its strength is not in developing new technologies first, but in successfully commercializing them.”
Samsung might not exactly be Tesla, but Apple is definitely Edison – an “inventor” who doesn’t deserve 1/10 of the recognition they get for the inventions they’ve supposedly brought to the world.
A large number of Samsung documents were revealed through the court discovery process. They show that Samsung was explicitily warned away from copying Apple products by various third parties, including Google.
Below, a sampling of some of the points excerpted from the documents.
In February 2010, Google told Samsung that Samsung’s “P1†and “P3†tablets (Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Tab 10.1) were “too similar†to the iPad and demanded “distinguishable design vis-à -vis the iPad for the P3.â€
In 2011, Samsung’s own Product Design Group noted that it is “regrettable†that the Galaxy S “looks similar†to older iPhone models.
As part of a formal, Samsung-sponsored evaluation, famous designers warned Samsung that the Galaxy S “looked like it copied the iPhone too much,†and that “innovation is needed.†The designers explained that the appearance of the Galaxy S “[c]losely resembles the iPhone shape so as to have no distinguishable elements,†and “[a]ll you have to do is cover up the Samsung logo and it’s difficult to find anything different from the iPhone.â€
More might have been revealed except Samsung deleted a large number of internal documents and emails once the discovery process had begin. U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal in San Jose, California, has agreed with Apple that jurors should be told that they can draw an “adverse inference†from Samsung’s deletion of the e-mails Apple had sought as evidence.
Nice spin on Samsung’s decades-old policy of automatically deleting emails after two weeks. Interestingly enough, Apple brought the same defense for the ITC… Which threw it out.
In the ruling allowing Apple to invite the jury to reach adverse conclusions about Samsung’s actions Judge Paul Grewal said “In effect, Samsung kept the shredder on long after it should have known about this litigation†. The judge said the “rolling basis†Samsung used for deletions resulted in a similar ruling against the company in case filed in 2004.
Presumably if the deleted material helped Samsung’s case it would have been kept.
All of this may be true, and for a design patent it’s certainly relevant. However, it also serves to highlight the problem. Personally I don’t want progress in technology to be held back by the the danger of products looking similar.
If someone might have mistaken a Galaxy for an iPhone then this is certainly a problem of false representation. But if two products look similar but clearly distinguishable, do we really want this to be enough reason to create a state-enforced monopoly?
Samsung really needs to point out the LG Prada (which Apple copied their iPhone design from).
I really am sick of Apple’s “competition through litigation” crap that is costing US tax payer money by tying up the court system with their idiotic lawsuits. I just hope this provides a wake-up call and the USPTO completely throws out ridiculous shape patents, etc…